Courtesy of Judith Gregg Librarian Catherine Arbogast heads out with a personalized book delivery from the Los Altos main library.

Love of learning and curiosity about the world sometimes grow only more urgent as a person spends more and more time at home, limited by age, health condition, or both. Librarians head out from the Los Altos main l...

Already known as an innovator in the tech field, Google Inc. is now moving in on the art world.

The Mountain View-based company July 11 launched the “Paint the Town” contest, a “moving art experiment” that invites California residents over the age of 13 to submit physical or digital artwork that would decorate the door...

Traci Newell/Town Crier The six-week, tuition-free Stretch to Kindergarten program, hosted at Bullis Charter School, serves children who have not attended preschool. A teacher leads children in singing about the parts of a butterfly, above.

courtesy of Rishi Bommannan Rishi Bommannan cycled from Bates College in Maine to his home in Los Altos Hills, taking several selfies along the way. He also raised nearly $13,000 for the Livestrong Foundation, which supports cancer patients.

The Town Crier’s recent article on coyotes venturing down from the foothills in search of sustenance referenced the organization Project Coyote (“Recent coyote attacks keep residents on edge,” July 1). Do not waste your time contac...

Photos by Alicia Castro/Town Crier Local residents participate in an exercise class at the Grant Park Senior Center, above. Betsy Reeves, below left with Gail Enenstein, lobbied for senior programming in south Los Altos.

Grace Wilson Franks, our beloved mother and grandmother, left us peacefully on July 16, 2015 just a few weeks short of her 92nd birthday. She was born to Ross and Florence (Cruzan) Wilson in rural Tulare, California on Septem...

Most of us have a place inside our hearts and minds that occasionally causes us trouble. For some, it is sadness, depression or despair. For others, it may be fear, anger, resentment or myriad other emotional “dark places” that at times seem to hij...

My question to the accomplished psychologist and research scientist following her presentation to a large crowd at Stanford University – a presentation highlighting the link between mental and physical health – seemed simple enough.

“There’s plenty of evidence showing the impact that our thoughts can have on our brain,” I said. “But is there any evidence that these thoughts actually originate in the brain? And if not, then where do these thoughts come from?”

Her answer: “We don’t know.”

The rather brief and somewhat matter-of-fact response elicited a fair amount of chuckles from the audience. I guess most of us expected a more detailed explanation. But as the laughter died down, I considered the significance of what was just said.

Could it be that this woman’s honest and humble answer had inadvertently engaged the audience in a new line of medical inquiry, perhaps hastening a radically new view – even a new era – of medicine?

When it comes to our thoughts – the consciousness, the brain, the mind, whatever you want to call it – there’s a lot that we already know. For instance, we know that there’s a link between what we think and the way our bodies act. You get embarrassed, your face turns red; you become frightened, your heart beats faster.

We’re also learning that certain types of thoughts such as gratitude, forgiveness and compassion can be particularly beneficial to our health. Negative thoughts tend to have the opposite effect.

What remains to be discovered, however, is where all these thoughts begin.

One of the most provocative suggestions comes from Dr. Larry Dossey, author of the best-selling “Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing” (HarperOne, 1999) and the forthcoming “One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters” (Hay House). Dossey believes that “consciousness is not confined to one’s individual body,” but that there’s a singular, “nonlocal mind” governing one and all.

This presents a bit of a dilemma, particularly for those who consider this mind to be divine. If an ever-present, all-powerful God is the source of such health-inducing thoughts as gratitude and compassion, does this mean that He or She is also the source of those thoughts that produce mental and physical suffering, both for ourselves and others? Is God both good and evil?

So far, the best answer I’ve heard predates Dossey by at least a couple of thousand years.

“‘I know the thoughts that I think toward you,’ saith the Lord, ‘thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end,’” it says in the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11).

In other words, our health doesn’t depend so much on our differing views of the Divine, but on our willingness to adopt as our own His or Her view of us – a view that we’re assured includes a decidedly secure future.

Assuming for the moment that this is true, it would mean that any evil thoughts that happen to cross our mental radar screens are nothing more than an opportunity to get to know the Divine a little better – and for our lives to become a lot healthier.

Chances are this isn’t the answer that most of us are ready to accept. At the very least, however, it’s one we should all consider – and certainly one that could usher in an entirely new and exciting era of medicine.

Eric Nelson serves as media and legislative spokesman for Christian Science in Northern California. The Christian Science of Church in Los Altos is located at 401 University Ave., and the public Reading Room at 60 Main St. For more information, visit www.cschurchlosaltos.com.

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